I think its generally about the turbulent social upheaval of the late 60s/early 70s. The riots and stuff.

Hence the whole 'they've got the guns but we've got the numbers' part.

And the 'Five to One' meaning five rioters to one riot cop.

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That's what I've always figured, although I never took the number "five" literally-- I just assumed Morrison liked the sound of it more than "six", "four", or whatever.
You got to understand that for a brief time (maybe 1968-1970), no rocker had credibility unless he or she acknowledged the "revolution" at least once, somehow.

Although the song appears militant in tone, Morrison always denied it was supposed to be political. In their Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman have this to say:

"Listened to in its entirety, the song seems to be a parody of all the naïve revolutionary rhetoric heard on the streets and read in the underground press of the late sixties. This interpretation is strongly supported by the final verse, [in which] Jim addressed some of the young people in his constituency, the 'hippie/flower child' hordes he saw in growing numbers, panhandling on the city sidewalks outside every concert hall."

The Doors' producer Paul Rothchild speculated about the unexplained statistic of the title: "Five to one is the same as one in six, the approximate rate of blacks to whites in the U.S., and one in five I remember was being reported as the dope-smoking ratio in Los Angeles."

Although the song appears militant in tone, Morrison always denied it was supposed to be political. In their Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman have this to say:

"Listened to in its entirety, the song seems to be a parody of all the naïve revolutionary rhetoric heard on the streets and read in the underground press of the late sixties. This interpretation is strongly supported by the final verse, [in which] Jim addressed some of the young people in his constituency, the 'hippie/flower child' hordes he saw in growing numbers, panhandling on the city sidewalks outside every concert hall."

The Doors' producer Paul Rothchild speculated about the unexplained statistic of the title: "Five to one is the same as one in six, the approximate rate of blacks to whites in the U.S., and one in five I remember was being reported as the dope-smoking ratio in Los Angeles."